James Smithson 17 



scientific knowledge as would enable him to use with delib- 

 erate choice the language of his will, we may answer with 

 confidence that his was the knowledge of a professional 

 student, and not of the amateur, that he was one who could 

 well discriminate between what was best for the increase and 

 what was best for the diffusion of knowledge, and that the 

 capacity for terse expression already referred to shows itself 

 eminently in the concision and clearness with which he ex- 

 presses this distinction, in that most brief and most important 

 of clauses of his will presently to be cited. 



We have a likeness of him taken in the form of a bust, 

 executed probably in the years when he was most active in 

 these scientific labors. The precise date of the bust, a re- 

 production of which (on steel by Charles Burt, made in 1879) 

 is here given, is unknown. 



Of Smithson's subsequent life we know but little. His later 

 years appear to have been tried by bad health and painful 

 infirmities. During these years he seems to have resided 

 chiefly in Paris, where he lived at Number 121 Rue Mont- 

 martre, and where he was in the habit of entertaining his 

 friends. One gathers from his letters, from the uniform con- 

 sideration with which he speaks of others, from kind traits 

 which he showed, and from the general tenor of what is not 

 here particularly cited, the impression of an innately gentle 

 nature, but also of a man who is gradually renouncing, not 

 without bitterness, the youthful hope of fame, and, as health 

 and hope diminish together, is finally living for the day 

 rather than for any future. 



To this period belongs an interesting citation from Arago's 

 eulogy on Ampere : 



"Some years since in Paris I made the acquaintance of 

 a distinguished foreigner, of great wealth, but in wretched 



